Issues and debates Flashcards
Gender bias - AO1
Psychologists seek universality, but bias may be inevitable as psychologists are products of the time and period.
Alpha bias - exaggerates differences between men and women. Tends to devalue women. E.g. Freud says women are morally inferior due to weaker identification with same-sex parent.
Beta bias - underestimates differences.
E.g. fight or flight based on male participants, but tend and befriend more common in women. Due to love hormone oxytocin being more plentiful in women.
Androcentrism - normal behaviour is judged from the male standard, e.g. female aggression explained by PMS but male aggression is rational. Psychology has been historically androcentric, most influential psychologists are men.
Gender bias - AO3
- Gender bias in research - studies of gender bias published less than studies of other biases e.g. ethnicity - problem not taken seriously. Funded less often and by less prestigious journals.
- Gender bias can be gynocentric - Bowlby undervalues men as parents, suggesting that mothers must be the primary caregiver.
- Social stereotypes (men have better spatial ability, women have better verbal.) presented as facts. Fits stereotypes of women as ‘speakers’ and men as ‘doers.’ Recent research suggests no difference in brain structure.
C.P - some stereotypes do have a biological basis, e.g. female multitasking explained by better hemispheric connections.
Culture bias - AO1
68% of research participants from US. 80% are students. WEIRD participants - westernised, educated from industrialised, rich democracies. Behaviour from non-WEIRD cultures seen as abnormal.
Ethnocentrism - superiority of own cultural group, others seen as abnormal or deficient. E.g. Ainsworth - Japanese babies classed as insecure, but mothers just had different child-rearing styles.
Cultural relativism - etic - study behaviour from outside a culture and attempt to describe it as universal. Emic - from inside, trying to identify behaviours specific to that culture. Imposed etic - Strange situation, definitions of abnormality.
Culture bias - AO3
- Many classic studies of social influence are culturally biased - Asch, Milgram. Findings not replicated in individualistic cultures. E.g collectivists more conformist.
C.P - individualism/collectivism distinction may no longer apply due to increasing global media. Studies compared Japan and US, found little difference. - Ethnic stereotyping - e.g. early army IQ tests were ethnocentric, but then used as ‘proof’ that certain ethnic groups were inferior. Led to eugenic social policies.
+ Emergence of ‘cultural psychology’ - studies how people are shaped by their culture, emic approach to avoid ethnocentrism, e.g. local researchers. Emerging field, incorporates sociology and anthropology.
Free will and determinism - AO1
Free will - humans are free to make choices. Biological and environmental influences can be rejected, the humanistic approach.
Determinism - hard determinism - fatalism - all human action has a cause, either internal or external.
Soft determinism - people have freedom to make choices within a restricted range of options.
Types: biological, environmental, psychic.
Scientific emphasis on causal explanations - lab studies allowing for isolation of variables. One of the basic principles of science - everything has a cause, cause can be explained by general law.
Free will and determinism - AO3
- Drawbacks of determinism - adolescents who believed in fatalism more prone to depression, external locus of control. Even if we don’t have free will, it may be socially beneficial to pretend we do.
+ Research evidence for determinism - participants asked to flick wrist randomly - unconscious brain activity precedes conscious decision.
C.P - not evidence against free will, delayed conscious awareness still means person may have made decision.
- The law - hard determinism incompatible with legal principle of moral responsibility. Main principle of legal system is that defendant exhibited free will. Only rare instances have ‘law of diminished responsibility,’ where defendant does not act in accordance with their free will, such as self-defence or psychotic episode.
The nature-nurture debate - AO1
Nature - nativists argue that human characteristics are determined by heredity. Biological approach. Intelligence and personality are just as biological as eye colour.
Nurture - environmental influences written on a blank state. E.g. behaviourists. Empiricists who believe in tabula rasa.
Measuring nature and nurture - concordance rates and correlation coefficients. Twin studies. Heritability represents proportion within a population due to genes. Heritability figure for IQ is .5 - 50% environment, 50% biology.
Epigenetics - idea that we can change our genetic activity but not the genes themself. E.g. lifestyle like smoking leaves a mark on our genes - switches them on and off. This can be passed down to children.
Interactionist approach - can’t separate - relative contribution is what’s important. Diathesis-stress model for OCD or schizophrenia.
Genotype and phenotype.
The nature-nurture debate - AO3
+ Adoption studies - compare similarities between adopted child and biological/adoptive parents. Genes account for 41% of variance in aggression according to meta analysis.
C.P - children pick their own environment appropriate to their nature - cant separate. Niche-picking.
+ Real-world application - genetic counselling for OCD. OCD has .76 heritability rate. People who are predisposed can receive advice about how to prevent disorder.
+ Support for epigenetics - pregnant mothers had low birth weight babies during Dutch famine - babies were twice as likely to later develop schizophrenia. Previous generations can leave epigenetic markers that influence health of offspring.
Holism and reductionism - AO1
Holism - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts - e.g. humanistic and psychodynamic approaches. Individual experience should not be broken down. Uses qualitative approaches.
Reductionism - reducing to simplest principles. Levels of explanation (e.g. OCD). Socio-cultural, psychological, physiological, neurochemical.
Biological reductionism - neurochemicals, evolution, genetics. E.g. OCD and serotonin activity.
Environmental reductionism - reducing everything to stimulus and responses. Tabula rasa.
Holism and reductionism - AO3
- Practical value - holistic accounts become complex and impractical, e.g. difficult to treat depression when causes include past/present, relationships, biology etc.
+ Reductionism is scientific - basis of operationalisation, enables objective and reliable experiments/observations. For example, research on attachment reduced it to separation anxiety.
C.P - reductionist approaches in terms of genes/neurotransmitters don’t include meaning, and therefore lack context.
- Higher level - some behaviours such as the Stanford prison experiment can’t be understood in terms of individual members - no conformity gene - whole group interaction.
Idiographic and nomothetic approaches - AO1
Idiographic approach - one person/group - qualitative research - interviews and thematic analysis. Generalisations made based on case studies.
E.g. Rogers and Freud.
Nomothetic approach - quantitative research - hypothesis testing, statistical analysis. Numerical data.
E.g. - Skinner, Sperry (split-brain).
Objectivity vs. subjectivity. Nomothetic assumes objective measurement is possible through standardisation. Idiographic believes only individual experience matters.
Idiographic and nomothetic approaches - AO3
+ Complete account - idiographic compliments nomothetic - e.g. case study of HM. Single case influenced how we think about everyone’s memory.
C.P - idiographic research on own is restricted, no baseline for comparison, unscientific.
+ Nomothetic has scientific credibility - objectivity, standardisation, control. Idiographic researchers also seek to objectify methods. Triangulation - findings from range of studies using different methods are compared to raise their validity. Qualitative researchers more reflexive. Both raise scientific status.
- Nomothetic approach loses the person while looking for statistics. E.g. schizophrenia. Knowing there is a 1% risk doesn’t tell us about what the disorder is like to experience.
Ethical implications of research studies and theory - AO1
Ethical implications - about consequences of research on participants.
Social sensitivity - research that has consequences for the wider groups they represent. E.g. research on memory is unlikely to have detrimental effects on a whole group.
Implications for research process:
Research question - narrow focus e.g. ‘alternative relationships’ has hetero bias.
Dealing with participants - victims of domestic abuse may worry about confidentiality, stress or discussing experience. Deal with issues like informed consent, anonymity and protection from harm.
Way findings are used - may give scientific credence to prejudice e.g. IQ tests in US used to restrict immigration.
Ethical implications of research studies and theory - AO3
+ Socially sensitive research can have benefits for groups. E.g. homosexuality listed in DSM but the Kinsey report showed it was normal.
C.P - may be negative consequences like criminal gene - shifts responsibility.
+ Real-world application - decisions on crime, child care, use socially sensitive research. For this reason, independent groups such as ONS collect and distribute objective statistics.
- Poor research design + socially sensitive = bad outcomes. E.g. Burt’s research on IQ led to 11+ exam but later shown to be fraudulent. 11+ still used today.
